Support is requested for a Keystone Symposia meeting entitled Structural Analysis of Supramolecular Assemblies by Hybrid Methods, organized by Andrej Sali, Brian T. Chait and David Baker. The meeting will be held in Tahoe City, California from March 3 - 7, 2013. In order to understand the workings of a living cell, we need to know the structures and dynamics of individual biological macromolecules, their complexes and networks, organelles, and whole cells, thus interfacing structural biology with cell biology, systems biology, proteomics, chemical biology, and biophysics. The accuracy, precision, completeness, and efficiency of structural characterization are maximized by hybrid or integrative approaches that combine data from multiple types of experimental methods through the use of computational analysis and modeling methods. These experimental methods include X-ray crystallography, NMR spectroscopy, electron microscopy, small angle X- ray scattering, mass spectrometry, chemical cross-linking, super-high resolution optical microscopy, optical microscopy, and others. The goal of this meeting is to highlight the strengths and limitations of the current hybrid approaches as well as to identify new promising advances in experimental methods for collecting the data and computational methods for converting the data to models. Finally, hybrid approaches will be demonstrated by their applications to important and challenging biological problems, spanning a wide range of length and time scales, from atomic structures of individual proteins to low-resolution representations of whole cells.
Drug discovery generally benefits from a mechanistic molecular understanding of normal and disease processes. Developing a complete description of the structures and dynamics of individual biological macromolecules, their complexes and networks requires integrative - or hybrid - approaches (such as computational analysis and modeling methods) to combine data from multiple types of experiments. The Keystone Symposia meeting on Structural Analysis of Supramolecular Assemblies by Hybrid Methods will highlight the strengths and limitations of the current hybrid approaches as well as identify promising new experimental methods for collecting the data and new computational methods for converting the data to models.
